road trip!

my husband had his birthday just a little while ago, and as he usually just buys whatever he wants or needs, it is kind of hard to shop for gifts for him. so, i thought a trip would be good. we had been talking about taking a trip to vancouver, b.c. to check out some of the flea markets up there...we really miss the ones they had in california! we had finally found one near us in federal way, and last time we went there to get our flea market fix, there was a lowe's hardware store where it used to be!
anyway, so here we are at the canadian border crossing in blaine, waiting to go through, passports in hand. don't want to get detained at the border, again. (that was a really long time ago, but you know i NEVER forget my identification now!) for our overnight stay, my daughter works for a place that allows us to get totally awesome rates for really nice hotels, so i thought we would give that a try. it turned out to be a really, really nice place...we are used to travelodge and great westerns! after we checked into our hotel room, we drove on up to the city. i thought we were going to be about a 20 minute drive away from downtown vancouver, but after we got a little bit lost and turned around, it was more like about an hour! finally we found our way and found some familiar spots.

we ended up stopping in chinatown, and walking around for a while. we bought some hum bow to snack on, and looked for some good junk to buy. here is a display at one of the produce/food markets there. the vegetables, dried fish, and other products are always arranged so beautifully, i had to take photos of them! i got these cute little chopstick rests, (sumo babies?!) and the noodle bowl in a restaurant supply place. i love the blue and white pottery, and the rice pattern where the the light shows through, where the pottery was pierced before being glazed. we also found a meat market, where my husband bought some beef jerky. when we were driving back to the hotel room, he opened it up and tasted it... he was sorry that vancouver was so far away, because the jerky was sooo good!
after we got up and about the next morning, we had remembered passing a flea market while finding our way to the hotel location the day before, so we went looking for that. we stopped somewhere to get a bite (and coffee! i so totally NEED my morning coffee!) and then it turned out we had stopped right across the way from the flea market! we walked around and everything seemed priced really high for flea market items! but i did find this cute serving bowl, with my favorite pink flowers and gold filigree! i have other items with this style patterns but i did not have any serving dishes like it yet.
and then we come to my hubby's purchase in canada...every time we go there, he MUST come back with this...
ketchup. he INSISTS it tastes so much better than american ketchup! we did not get it at the flea market...we went to the gigantic yellow and green 'the real canadian superstore' the night before! we had to get that ketchup! and i won't even go into the ketchup wars that we have at our house! i think ketchup is for french fries and hamburgers...DH, and my stepdad for that matter as well, like to put it on pretty much everything! i get SOOO annoyed when i have cooked something, and taken quite a bit of time preparing it, and it get covered in this mess! but, they know better at least, to not even DARE get that stuff near my tamales!